CHAN 3042 BOOK 29/01/2016 14:55 Page 2 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) Eugene Onegin KG A Opera in three acts Text by the composer and Konstantin Shilovsky after Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin English translation by David Lloyd-Jones Eugene Onegin....................................................Thomas Hampson baritone Tatyana......................................................................Kiri Te Kanawa soprano Lensky..........................................................................Neil Rosenshein tenor Prince Gremin....................................................................John Connell bass A Captain/Zaretsky....................................................Richard Van Allan bass Monsieur Triquet..............................................................Nicolai Gedda tenor Madame Larina..................................................Linda Finnie mezzo-soprano Filippyevna............................................Elizabeth Bainbridge mezzo-soprano Olga................................................................Patricia Bardon mezzo-soprano Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Orchestra and Chorus of Welsh National Opera Gareth Jones chorus master Sir Charles Mackerras 3 CHAN 3042 BOOK 29/01/2016 14:55 Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE TimePage TimePage No. 5 Scene and Quartet Act I 8 ‘Mesdames, I hope that you’ll excuse me’ 1:4897 1 Introduction 2:3992 Lensky, Onegin, Madame Larina 9 ‘Now tell me, which of them’s Tatyana?’ 1:4297 Scene 1 Onegin, Lensky, Tatyana, Olga No. 1 Duet and Quartet 2 ‘Oh, did you hear the lovesick shepherd boy’ 5:0892 No. 6 Scene and Arioso Tatyana, Olga, Madame Larina, Nurse 10 ‘How perfect, how wonderful’ 2:14 098 No. 2 Chorus and Dance of the Peasants Lensky, Olga, Onegin, Tatyana 3 ‘My legs ache and can no longer run’ 2:3994 11 ‘How I love you, I adore you, Olga’ 3:16 099 Leader (John Hudson), Peasants, Madame Larina Lensky, Olga 4 ‘In a cottage by the water’ 2:0594 No. 7 Closing Scene Peasants 12 ‘Ah, here you are!’ 2:40100 No. 3 Scene and Aria Madame Larina, Nurse, Lensky, Onegin 5 ‘Oh, how I love to hear the people singing’ 0:5895 Tatyana, Olga Scene 2 6 ‘I’m not the sort to sit in silence’ 2:3595 No. 8 Introducton and Scene Olga 13 Introduction 1:38101 No. 4 Scene 14 ‘There! No more talk tonight’ 1:19101 7 ‘Come here, my darling Olga!’ 3:1095 15 ‘I can’t sleep, Nanny’ 0:49101 Madame Larina, Nurse, Tatyana, Peasants, Olga 16 ‘Well, let me think now’ 4:55101 Nurse, Tatyana 4 5 CHAN 3042 BOOK 29/01/2016 14:55 Page 6 TimePage COMPACT DISC TWO TimePage No. 9 Letter Scene Act II 17 ‘To write is foolishness, I know it’ 2:52102 18 ‘“I had to write”’ 3:03102 Scene 1 19 ‘No, there could never be another’ 1:52103 No. 13 Entr’acte, Waltz and Chorus 20 ‘For you were always there beside me’ 0:50103 1 Entr’acte and Waltz 2:38107 21 ‘“Are you an angel”’ 2:20103 2 ‘This is superb!’ 1:45107 22 ‘“No, come what may”’ 2:14103 Guests Tatyana 3 ‘Certainly! But why aren’t you dancing?’ 1:03108 No. 10 Scene and Duet Captain, Guests 23 ‘Ah, night is over!’ 2:30104 4 ‘So that’s their verdict!’ 2:19108 24 ‘Oh, Nanny, may I ask a favour?’ 0:25104 Onegin, Lensky, Guests 25 ‘Then make your grandson go in secret’ 3:08104 Tatyana, Nurse No. 14 Scene and Triquet’s Couplets 5 ‘How can I have deserved to be so taunted by you?’2:22109 Scene 3 Lensky, Olga, Onegin No. 11 Chorus of Girls 6 ‘By chance I ’ave with me a song’ 0:44110 26 ‘Dear companions, come this way’ 3:07105 7 ‘“A cette fête conviée”’ 2:39110 Girls Triquet, Guests No. 12 Scene and Aria 27 ‘Onegin!Here! To see me!’ 2:23106 No. 15 Mazurka and Scene 28 ‘You wrote a letter’ 1:47106 8 ‘Messieurs! Mesdames! ’ 1:13111 Tatyana, Onegin Captain 29 ‘Were I the sort who had intended’ 3:14106 Mazurka Onegin 9 ‘Why aren’t you dancing, Lensky?’ 3:14111 30 ‘But try to practise self-control’ 1:02107 Onegin, Lensky, Guests, Madame Larina Onegin, Girls TT 70:30 00 6 7 CHAN 3042 BOOK 29/01/2016 14:55 Page 8 TimePage TimePage No. 16 Finale 20 ‘The Princess Gremina!’ 2:15119 10 ‘Here in your house!’ 2:50112 Guests, Onegin, Tatyana, Gremin Lensky, Onegin, Tatyana, Olga, Madame Larina, Guests No. 20a Aria 11 ‘Your challenge I accept’ 1:52114 Onegin, Lensky, Guests, Olga 21 ‘The gift of love is rightly treasured’ 5:41119 Gremin Scene 2 No. 21 Scene and Arioso No. 17 Introduction, Scene and Aria 22 ‘And now, you must be introduced to her’ 1:21119 12 Introduction 1:59115 Gremin, Tatyana, Onegin 13 ‘What’s happened? Where can your opponent be?’ 1:14115 23 ‘Is this the very same Tatyana’ 2:22120 Zaretsky, Lensky Onegin 14 ‘How far, how far away you seem now’ 6:22115 Lensky Scene 2 No. 18 Duel Scene No. 22 Final Scene 15 ‘Ah, here they are!’ 1:55116 24 Introduction 1:39120 25 16 ‘We fight to satisfy our honour’ 4:02116 ‘Why, why did he return and write this letter?’ 2:15120 Zaretsky,Onegin, Lensky Tatyana, Onegin 26 ‘Onegin, I was then far younger’ 2:15121 Act III Tatyana 27 ‘Ah, Tatyana!’ 3:15121 Scene One 28 ‘Onegin, as a man of honour’ 2:07122 17 No. 19 Polonaise 4:19117 29 ‘Onegin! Leave me, I entreat you’ 1:40122 No. 20 Scene and Aria Onegin, Tatyana 18 ‘Here, too, I’m bored!’ 2:25117 TT 71:5000 Onegin 19 Ecossaise 1:50117 8 9 CHAN 3042 BOOK 29/01/2016 14:55 Page 10 re St Petersburg ball, Act III Scene 1, o hm from Welsh National Opera’s 1993 s A e production of Eugene Onegin n i r he t a C Kiri te Kanawa CHAN 3042 BOOK 29/01/2016 14:55 Page 12 outset, Tchaikovsky felt that it would be transplanted onto the operatic stage. However, Tchaikovsky:Eugene Onegin necessary for him to adopt an essentially from his earliest acquaintance with the Pushkin radical approach if the project were to be text, he had been most deeply moved by the How pleasant to avoid all the routine verse was extremely slight. However, over the successful, a fact he took particular pains to episode in which Tatyana sits up throughout Pharaohs, Ethiopian princesses, poisoned course of a few days the composer was quick point out to Shilovsky. More than anything the night penning her innocent and impulsive cups and all the rest of these tales about to change his mind and recognise that else, he wanted to avoid the stultifying operatic declaration of love to Onegin, only to have him automata. What poetry there is in Onegin! ultimately the poem’s dramatic defects could be conventions of his day, which he felt would be cruelly reject her advances when they meet the Thus wrote Tchaikovsky to his brother overcome by the ‘richness of its poetry’ and its unable to do justice to Pushkin’s highly- next morning. Indeed, it was with the intention Modest in May 1877, as he began work on his ‘humanity and simplicity’. Above all, he was charged text. Significantly, he soon dispensed that this passage (part of which provides the new opera, Eugene Onegin. confident that he could produce an operatic with Shilovsky’s services altogether and himself basis of the famous ‘Letter Scene’) should It was the singer Elizaveta Lavrovskaya who version of Eugene Onegin which would genuinely took over the fashioning of the libretto for a form the emotional focus of the opera that had suggested to him at a recent party that he complement the work on which it was based, work which he was to describe, with Tchaikovsky drafted his scenario. Soon it was to should consider Pushkin’s ‘novel in verse’ as the rather than destroy its essential character and characteristic precision, as a set of ‘lyrical take on an even more personal significance. basis for an opera. Tchaikovsky’s initial thus attract the opprobrium of Pushkin’s many scenes in three acts’. Inspired as he clearly was by the figure of reaction, like that of most of his friends and admirers. Though he was not entirely successful Though this was not Tchaikovsky’s first opera the spurned Tatyana, it is scarcely surprising acquaintances, was unfavourable, and he was in this regard – Turgenev, for instance, found – he had already worked on several abortive that, having produced his scenario, tempted to reject the idea of Eugene Onegin out much to criticise in the libretto – it is generally projects, including a setting of Pushkin’s Boris Tchaikovsky should then have had cause to of hand and concentrate instead on two acknowledged today that with Eugene Onegin Godunov and a treatment of the Undine legend, reconsider his reaction to an unsolicited love alternative and more promising suggestions, Tchaikovsky produced both his own operatic as well as the historically based The Oprichnik letter which he had received a few weeks Shakespeare’s Othello and Alfred de Vigny’s masterpiece, as well as one of the most and what he later called his ‘brilliant failure’, earlier from a young student at the Cinq-mars. Surely Pushkin’s work was far too enduring contributions to the nineteenth- Vakula the Smith (later revised as Cherevichki) – Conservatory. To the composer, the similarity subtle and much too highly regarded in literary century Russian repertoire. never before had he identified so closely with between his own position and that of the circles for him to dare subjecting it to an Once his interest had been aroused, any of his dramatic projects. To some extent, central character in his new opera must have operatic treatment, with all the adherence to Tchaikovsky was eager to set to work: the this may perhaps be explained by his growing seemed like the direct intervention of Fate, a artificial convention which that would involve? entire scenario was drafted during the course realisation that through the medium of his force whose warnings he was always ready to Moreover, at first sight it did not appear to of just one sleepless night, and the following music he could provide the ideal counterpart to heed.